ETHICS AND NOSTALGIA IN THE CONTEMPORARY NOVEL

"In this study, John J. Su explores the relationship between nostalgia and ethics in novels across the English-speaking world. He challenges the tendency in literary studies to characterize memory as positive and nostalgia as necessarily negative. Instead, this book argues that nostalgic fantasies are crucial to the ethical visions presented by contemporary novels. From Jean Rhys to Wole Soyinka and from V.S. Naipaul to Toni Morrison, Su identifies nostalgia as a central concern in the twentieth-century novel."--Jacket.